We're f**ked:
What a phrase. All the promise of a romance language with an abrupt Anglo/Saxon (emphasis on the Saxon) finish, a kiss followed by a good hard blow to the jaw. It's so utterly American, this phrase -- not only phonetically but in meaning and intent and purpose, all pretense stripped away with little, if any, room for argument, much less irony or reserve; a statement as flat as Kansas and as blunt as a cabbie in traffic on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
It's got two specific meanings, this remark, this term. It connotes not only a state of being, but a state of mind as well. For both the announcement's utility is an asset, a declaration no different than, say, "It's raining" or "We're crying", probably more than a bit of both. And the distinctions blur more and more with each passing day... at least in our end of town.
Life as we knew it seems distant now -- body scans, phone taps, id checks, a free market rife with rules on with whom you sleep and where you pray, the lot of it a muddy boot on the pristine white carpet of vaguely defined freedom they keep telling us we have in such surplus. However "they" have removed the drama's kabuki mask of late, rending delicate juxtapositions nothing more than sloppy martial arts moves, necks wrenched in flashes of color and light and sound -- like acupuncture performed with a power drill.
It's not all that hard to imagine other's pain. But for some such ignorance comes easily. We call them "politicians" and, more than anything else, they're a breed apart. Sure, they look like us. They talk like us. They walk like us. But there's a crucial difference.
Most of us have what is known in the West as a "conscience", this word implying some teensy-eensy-weensy niblet of concern for one's fellow man. It doesn't always work and has a tendency to rev-up in the unlikeliest of scenarios, but, usually, it's there.
Politicians however, like sociopaths and career mercenaries (probably the same thing, actually), lack the qualities of conscience -- empathy, mercy, etcetera -- at least as we understand them. Indeed, this absence marks the breed. And it presents something of a moral conundrum. What are you going to do with a senator who refuses to ratify a universally accepted nuclear disarmament arrangement until the American aristocracy get a tax break? Most moral societies would disembowel him, or at least kick him in the head. But in Washington this kind of mischief is just another menu item. Of course an icon like Colin Powell can loftily object... but we all know how quickly he caves.
Here's where "utility" comes into play. The declaration works wonders from a cause and effect standpoint -- "we're" because " we're", as it were; Attitude equals Situation. It's almost too easy to write off, really -- we're this way because we're this way. But the evidence is practically overwhelming.
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